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Hello and welcome to the FastNet H1 Financial Results. My name is Laura and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Mikhail Langezal, the CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. And a warm welcome to everyone on this call, as well as to our webcast viewers. The presentation used during this call is available on our investor relations website. You can find that at ir.fastnetcharging.com. The cover page shows a project I'm very proud of. Last month, we completed a massive upgrade to one of the largest and busiest stations in the Netherlands, Ten Ruige Hoek West, a service area close to the motorway that passes Schiphol Airport on the route from Amsterdam towards The Hague, with around 100,000 vehicles passing by every day. The scale we needed here was so significant that we also decided to rebuild the entire station with a new type of canopy. As you can imagine, I'm very much looking forward to seeing the uplift in revenue at this station after the Dutchies return from their electric holidays and find out that one of our top stations, which was often quite busy in the past, had a massive upgrade and became twice as large. We want to make sure that the station always has a place for them to charge. Slide two, please. With reference to the information provided in these slides and discussed during this call, please take note of the disclaimer, which brings me to slide three. My name is Michiel Langezaal. I'm the CEO and one of the founders of Fastnet. Victor van Dijk, our CFO, is also present on this call. Together, we will present this webcast. Today, I will elaborate on the highlights of the first half of 2024. We will discuss the current market situation and sentiment, and we will look ahead to how we foresee developments and what this means for Fastnet in the coming period. As always, we will talk about the progress made in acquiring new locations and the construction of new stations. After that, Victor will take over and take you through the financial results for the first half of 2024. and it will also update you on our station metrics. After our presentation, we will be happy to answer your questions. If possible, please limit them to two questions per analyst so we can give everybody the opportunity. We've scheduled this call to last for one hour. That brings me to slide four. Let's start with revenue growth. FastNet's revenue grew strongly to 37.8 million. which is an increase of 45% compared to the first half of 2023. This is driven by the continued strong growth of electric vehicle fleets in Europe. Note that the EV fleet in Fastnet's markets grew by 38%. In the broader space of listed companies active in e-mobility, this is an extraordinary achievement, as many are currently struggling with the current market situation Parties that sell wall boxes, for example. So Fastnet is doing great. Our revenues have risen to 37.8 million euros, growing towards the 100 million euro annual revenue milestone. And as always, we have been able to outgrow the market as sales grew by 50% and EV stock grew by 38% in the same period. This also shows the resilience of our business model. because Fastnet sells electricity to the entire fleet of electric vehicles driving around, which is a recurring and growing form of demand. It is significantly less impacted by the temporary volatility of electric vehicle sales. About profitability. We continue to outgrow the market while delivering margins that are at or above target levels. With the continued scaling of revenue and having very solid positions in key European markets, it starts to provide significant freedom to continue to take the lead in setting the market price. Also, knowing that we have a very, very significant lead in station economics over others in the market puts us in a very strong position, in a very strong pricing position. This is something that many had not expected to happen. They thought Fastnet will be under pressure from others, but instead we are in the position to lead the way. Taking a look at the figures, the underlying company EBITDA has grown by 14% to 3.2 million. The figure that decreases as a consequence of Fastnet scaling its expansion efforts and the figure that increases as a consequence of scaling revenue. Increasing EBITDA while at the same time expanding at a high pace and outgrowing the market is an extraordinary achievement, I think. Moreover, these results are in line with our plan to reach a positive underlying company EBITDA for the full year 2024. Also important is cash flow and funding. As we continue to make massive investments in the expansion of our network, net profitability will, as expected and planned for, remain negative for some time. However, the scaling of revenues does lead to a quickly improving operating cash flow, which in the context of what we're doing might be a better metric to look at. Operating cash flow improved from minus 2.5 million in H1 last year to minus 1 million over the last six months. The significant scaling of revenues ahead of us puts Fastnet on the verge of starting to self-fund investments in new stations. Note that this is very, very different from the vast majority of players in the market, which have very different magnitudes of revenue per location. Fastnet is years ahead when it comes to commercial traction. In this context, I would also like to mention the issue of a record 61 million euros in bonds in H1 2024. This allowed us to fund our expansion efforts for the last six months, and it improved our cash position to 145.8 million euros. These two achievements are unique to Fastnet. and give us an incredible amount of freedom in expanding our network at speed without the risk of depth covenants that are currently plaguing others in the EV space. Both are providing interesting leverage for shareholders. Energy delivered per station was 403 megawatt hour annualized in Q2 2024. This is up 29% from the previous year, a little lower than the BV fleet penetration growth of 31%. As in the previous quarter, we took a look at what is causing this. The data again points towards the volume that in 2023 shifted from AC to DC charging as a consequence of the higher pricing of AC in the wake of the energy crisis. This volume has shifted back somewhat. with the AC charging provided by municipalities being more attractively priced again. Last but not least, on the people side, I would like to mention that I'm very happy that Françoise Poggi will be joining us as COO. This will again allow me to have more focus. Previously, she was responsible for Tesla's European supply chain and enjoyed similar roles at Sonos and Cisco Systems. I think van Zwazen will be of tremendous value to Fastnet, helping us to further scale across geographies. I will save the discussion of our record high location acquisition results for a little later when showing specific slides on the topic. Let's now look at the electric vehicle market. Moving on to slide five. The media tells us that EV sales are down repetitively. The question is, is that true? Actually, European electric vehicle sales have grown. European EV sales have grown by 1.3 percentage points, from 703,000 cars to 713,000 cars. When we exclude Germany, European EV sales have even increased by 9.4 percentage points. Germany is a bit of a special case, as due to unforeseen budgetary measures, the country had to very suddenly stop EV subsidies in December 2023. So the EV market is growing, although at the moment slower than analysts might have expected or hoped for. But given the circumstances, I would say that EV sales are actually very, very strong. Why? Well, firstly, people continue to buy EVs despite subsidies being significantly reduced, a move that is a logical result of the market growing and reaching its price parity point, but obviously taking away subsidies as an impact. So the market still showing growth is amazing. And there are more reasons, which I'll talk about in the coming slides. Slide six, please. For more than a decade, The entire industry has been focused on reaching the moment when it will be possible to produce an EV for the same price as a fossil car. The introduction of the Tesla Model 3 marked this moment in the large car segment several years ago. In the coming year, the Renault 5 and other models, such as the electric Fiat Panda, will bring price parity and great EVs that can compete with fossil cars to the smaller 25,000 euro segments. In more recent years, many analysts have predicted battery prices to enable a proper and at-par electric vehicle offer in a 25,000 euro segment. The learning curve for batteries would bring down prices by 25% with every doubling of capacity produced. The thinking was, that this would allow for around $50 per kilowatt hour by around 2025, 2027. Note that market leaders such as CATL have already achieved this price point this year. So what has caused this to accelerate? And what could happen beyond this point? With continued increases in production scale and matching price reductions, It is not hard to estimate $8 per kilowatt hour by 2030, a price level for battery cells that will be a game changer for the industry. This development was hard to believe for most analysts. Would the learning curve not level off earlier? Analyzing the raw material cost for the common NMC technology led many to expect the learning curve to level off somewhere around the earlier mentioned 50. because of hitting the barrier of raw material costs. In the last few years, we've seen LFP technology make huge improvements. Originally, many considered this battery technology unsuitable for cars because its power density was low and energy density was mediocre. Smart innovations have led to breakthroughs here. For example, the preheating of the battery, for which we have to thank Tesla, was the answer to making fast charging possible for this type of battery. LFP has now become a very capable battery technology to use in cars. And as a nice proof point, the recently launched Zeekr One is one of today's fastest charging cars with charge speeds well over 500 kilowatts. And it holds a CATL battery on LFP technology. So why am I telling you all of this? Well, LFP batteries have a far lower raw material cost and contain practically no rare earth materials. The raw material barrier for this technology lies more in the order of $11 per kilowatt hour. This is why battery prices have dropped faster than expected. More importantly, it will not only enable an at-par great electric vehicle offering in the 25,000 euro segment, it will flip the market and soon stop the sale of fossil cars altogether. Producing fossil cars will simply be too expensive beyond 2030. Which brings me to slide seven. Now, after having discussed the recent news on batteries, which significantly improves the already bright long-term outlook on the EV market, I would like to zoom in on what is happening today. What makes me claim that the EV market is strong? Talking about the middle part of the slide today. Many of the first 25,000 Euro cars have already been shown to the media and specification and pricing have often already been released. All signs point to OEMs trying to push the start of deliveries towards 2025. This would support them in meeting the EU regulations that become stricter in 2025. Furthermore, it looks like they would like to see if they can make people choose to buy one of their currently more profitable fossil cars until then. Whatever the reason, it is on a timeline of months. Fastnet is investing for the long term. And what is absolutely clear is that these cars are coming and the scale is a magnitude larger than the previous segments that we electrified. This is why the next phase of EV market growth is on our doorstep. After discussing the reasons for OEMs to decide the timing of their offerings, let's also talk about the timing of the decisions of consumers. And this brings me to the Osborne effect. The Osborne effect is a phenomenon where the announcement of new, more advanced products can significantly reduce the sales of the current offerings as consumers await the new versions to become available. Applying this to our market situation, with so many new, better, and more attractively priced models coming onto the market in the coming months, the Osborne effect would suggest consumers prefer to wait and significantly reduce EV sales. And this is not crazy. Personally, for example, I am currently driving a short lease vehicle. I had to hand in my previous lease, given that all potential lease extensions were exploited. While at the same time, the ordering option for the long wheelbase ID.Bus, the car I want to order, has been postponed several times. So I'm one of these people who waits. As for my big family, the car I want is on the horizon, but not yet on order. So many consumers are currently awaiting the ordering of their vehicle of choice. Secondly, subsidies have been brought in line with the scaling of the market and the price parity point being reached. And still, the EV market is growing. That shows its strength and resilience. The awaiting orders and the opening of a new segment of the market to be electrified, which also is a magnitude larger than the previous ones, is why the next phase of market acceleration is on our doorstep. So that is our view on the market. And this is why we are continuing our efforts to expand our network, which brings me to slide eight. More than 10 years ago, I started this company to build the infrastructure to set free the electric car, built the fast charging infrastructure that is needed to allow electric cars to drive around and for people to make the choice to go electric. Five years ago, we celebrated being a leading Dutch fast charging player and listed the company at Euronext Amsterdam. The idea was to raise funds and grow the company into a leading pan-European charging network. Europe has some 10,000 very high traffic petrol stations. And the milestone we set ourselves for 2030 was to get our hands on a thousand similar very high traffic locations, including a serious number of great motorway service areas. That would roughly translate into a top three to top five position in Europe's key markets. Today, we can announce that we have reached the halfway point, something I'm incredibly proud of. Moving on to slide nine. In the first half of 2024, we saw the continued acceleration in the acquisition of high traffic locations secure securing 76 new locations. This is our fastest acquisition pace ever. This leads to 509 locations signed at the end of this quarter. In the last 12 months, the acquisition speed of new locations has been above 100. That means we're fully on track to reach our goal of 1,000 stations by 2030. So the investments made in the network development, location design, and construction teams to be able to reach out to more landowners, to be able to develop more relationships, to investigate and design more locations, and to be able to do site due diligence at scale are paying off. Furthermore, with the revenue per station five-folding over the last five years, Fastnet is now successfully competing with retail development players to secure private locations along high traffic roads. It's the outsized revenue per station we realize that allows us to tap into this new pool of opportunities. Opportunities that as a consequence of different station economics do not exist for many others in the market. Let's go to slide 10. And we are not diluting our criteria in order to achieve scale. We continue to expand our best in market charging concept to these A-plus high traffic locations. What we do is scale the acquisition of great high traffic locations. And yes, that is the difficult thing, which makes me even more proud of our team to be able to have achieved a record level of new locations in the last six months. And this brings me to slide 11, and handing over to Victor van Dijk, our CFO.

Thanks, Michiel. And also from my side, welcome all to the call. Since PASNET's inception more than 10 years ago, we have been focused on building large, visible, and efficient charging stations on high traffic locations and delivering a great charging experience, just like Michiel explained, which is actually hard. Because these valuable locations are hard to secure and building large station requires building permits and grid connections. And vertically integrating your business and make it efficient takes a lot of time and efforts. We have seen other charging companies taking an easier route by putting charges on parking lots of others, mostly low traffic, and outsourcing most of the key charging company functions like charger management software, maintenance, customer support, design, and construction management. That is quicker in terms of putting down charges, but the value generation, both for the EV driver and the charging company, is much less in our view. So we have been scaling the hard thing. And by now, it's evident that this is paying off. Building great and large charging stations on high traffic locations and operating them really well through a vertically integrated business model leads to a predictable high session growth. that scales with the BV fleet penetration. And this is relatively independent of what other charging companies do on low traffic locations. And you can see that in the graph, which shows developments of sessions per station per day for the top 10 fast charging companies overall in our markets. Ultimately, Fastnet scaling the hard thing leads to high customer value, high investor value, with strong revenue growth and high return potential, and it drives the transition to electric mobility to bus.